ASa student during the early 2000s, Managing Director Tereza Havrlandova developed a passion for healthy eating and especially for raw food. But whenever snack cravings hit her, there was a problem. “There was no good, raw snack food available,” she recalled. As an enthusiast of great raw food, she set out on a journey to change that.
The raw facts
Following a period of market research and investigation, she opened her first production facility in 2007, employing two staff members. “From that moment on, we experienced fast growth,” said Ms Havrlandova, “and by 2015 we achieved €8 million in turnover from our 3,000sqm facility with 140 staff members.”
Today, Lifefood’s factory features four main production lines, of which one is solely focused on producing date bars, while another makes dehydrated products on a line that features 28 industrial dehydrators. The third one is the company’s choco -
late goods line, and the fourth manufactures Lifefood’s new non-date-based bars, including oat-based and protein-based bars.
Lifefood’s product range offers a comprehensive selection of raw food snacks, including bars, crackers, breakfast items, chocolates, savoury snacks, sweets, superfoods, nuts, seeds and dried fruit. It also manufactures bespoke products for private labels.
But it is its bars - and especially date bars - that Lifefood is best known for.
Bars without the bad bits
“Our bars have always been our best-selling products, making up around 70% of our sales,” Ms Havrlandova confirmed. “That’s why we are so focused on growing and evolving that side of our business because even though the bar category in most countries is very crowded, it still has significant growth potential.”
Lifefood’s bars are unique for their highquality ingredients and overall purity, according to Ms Havrlandova: “Many producers target low product pricing, but then they use bad-quality ingredients to achieve
In the highly competitive snack business, Lifefood, based in the Czech Republic, offers a refreshingly healthy alternative for consumers seeking products that are genuinely good for them, prepared by a company as enthusiastic about good health as they are. Managing Director Tereza Havrlandova met up with Richard Hagan to discuss the importance of eating raw food, speciality date bars and why good health is about more than just what you eat.Managing Director Tereza Havrlandova
that, such as using nut waste or flour instead of whole nuts. This necessarily affects the taste of the product. There’s a long list of poor-quality ingredients in some of the competition’s bars. Our highgrade ingredients make for the best tasting product and that makes them unique.”
The company’s new oat bars are the latest addition to Lifefood’s flourishing health bar production business. Lifefood’s oat bars are not the first to market, but they are unique for their health credentials.
“There are so many unhealthy bars on the market,” Ms Havrlandova said, “with several containing ingredients like sugars, palm oil, and artificial flavours or fragrances. Ours are extremely healthy, nutritious and 100% organic. We manufacture them without any added sugar or palm oil. They’re very pure and clean.”
Following an initial soft launch of its oat bars, Lifefood has rapidly scaled up the production to meet rising demand: “When we began making them in 2019, it was a very manual process,” said Ms Havrlandova. “We’re now switching to high-capacity machine production on a dedicated oat bar production line.”
The success of Lifefood’s products is driven by its steadfast commitment to using only pure raw ingredients. “Within
the raw foods category, we’re unique for offering a genuinely raw product,” she added. “Our product with its super highquality sets us apart in a busy market.”
Preferred procurement policies
Social and environmental responsibility is extremely important to Lifefood’s operations. With a focus on what it calls ‘responsible entrepreneurship’, the company’s procurement policy emphasises support for the often third-world communities that provide the delicious, nutritious ingredients for which its products are known. Consequently, Lifefood requires that its vendors must be actively involved in social responsibility programmes that directly benefit the communities supplying the ingredients for Lifefood recipes. These programmes include projects to develop freshwater infrastructure in rural areas, and others that
create jobs through the development of company facilities in those areas.
All of Lifefood’s suppliers have to be organic certified in order to do business with the company. And to further validate the credentials of its supplier network, Lifefood also occasionally physically inspects its vendor infrastructure on-site.
Organic certification with a true focus on organic produce is also a non-negotiable for Lifefood’s supplier network. “We only buy from suppliers whose core business is organic; we wouldn’t buy from a conventional manufacturer with one or two organic items in their portfolio,” Ms Havrlandova said. “And we certainly prefer to work with organic suppliers who have social responsibility programmes in place to support the local communities, and who ensure that we are only purchasing at sustainable levels.”
That’s the spirit
According to Lifefood, good health and wellbeing are not just about great nutrition and high-quality products loaded with the best
ingredients. It is also about spiritual health. “Spirituality in general is important for me personally,” Ms Havrlandova explained, “and for a lot of our staff.
“Our company has been a magnet for people living alternative lifestyles and we’re happy about that because making food isn’t just about mixing two ingredients together and shaping it: It’s also about creating a certain good energy that we want to deliver to the consumer. We believe that for consumers for whom spirituality is important, our approach resonates with them.”
Setting the trend
Since its inception, Lifefood has charted a course based on the company’s convictions, and nutritional philosophies. It is proudly a trendsetter rather than a follower, as Ms Havrlandova explained: “We are not focused on identifying and following trends in the marketplace.
Of course, we’re aware of certain market movements but in general, we are careful about how we respond to market demands. So many of these trends are really just fads that don’t last, and many are also based on nonsensical nutritional claims.
“Ever since we opened, we’ve been focused on creating trends, especially in the raw food category with our raw bars. We were the first in Europe to produce these bars and we created the date-based bar category. We’ve always pursued our own objectives based on our philosophies and so far, we’ve found success with that approach.
“I love having the opportunity to develop new products and then introduce them at shows where people have a chance to taste them,” she concluded. “Seeing people’s reactions and how they marvel at our products is so exciting. It’s a constant reminder that we’re doing something amazing.” n
